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I’m just making stuff up now. But I’ve always loved to sing, and this first year + out of college is the first time that I haven’t been involved in some sort of choir. I think it’s definitely affecting the amount of sentences I turn into songs. My pets probably think that I’ve lost all ability to talk normally.

My commute home every day is a solid 40 minutes of rocking out to whatever’s on the radio. If there are commercials everywhere, I give in and plug in my iPod. I seriously need to update my iPod though. There are songs on there that I skip every single time they come on.

Anyway, music is still a big part of my life, as it is for a lot of people. I received a guitar for my birthday in December, and can count the times I’ve played around with it on two hands. I think that that will be my end of year goal. Learn to play guitar. That way I can turn the little diddies I make up into complete works. Also, it will get me creating music again, and who knows, maybe I’ll join a choir or band that needs a guitarist. First thing’s first though: learn those dang chords.

When I was in high school, my choir director was a fun, goofy guy. One day he was assigning locations for sectional practice and said “Soprano’s in the back room, Toids, stay in here, Men in the practice room” We looked at him funny for a second. “What?”

“Toids?”

“Oh. Yeah. Well I was thinking Altos, altoids… toids.”

His train of thought made a lot of sense and resulted in a fun nickname for my section, but it only gained him weird glances at first because none of us were aware of his reasoning.

I encounter this a lot. Maybe it’s because I hang out with a an assortment of characters and have eclectic tastes. Maybe it’s because I have an overactive imagination. Whatever the reason, I tend to make connections that leave people going “huh?”

This inevitably leads to me trying to explain my convoluted thought process and more often than not giving up. Some things are better left off inside my head. I do have a lot of awesome stories to tell though and it is disappointing when people don’t “get” them or don’t care enough to listen all the way through.

But life is mostly us reliving and retelling the lessons we’ve learned. We share our experiences with others so that they mean something. The people and events that make up my past and my present are imperative to who I am.

So I will babble on, ignoring the fact I am being ignored.

Not that everyone ignores me. Some people listen, and share their stories in return. Let’s hope that that remains the case when more than two people read my blog.

Today I found out a very good friend is moving back to the area in a couple months! I couldn’t be more excited and it got me thinking about some of the great times we’ve had together, most involving one form of ridiculousness or another. In high school, we were in music appreciation together. We loved the class for many reasons. Our choir director taught it and he was amazing. Learning about classical composers was surprisingly entertaining. And of course, we spent most of the course writing notes and giggling back and forth.

The way our teacher taught music history was amazing. He emphasized the good parts. Chopin was a sickly, frail creature in love with a large woman named George. Schumann was completely emo. And Franz Liszt was the rockstar of the piano- and a complete manwhore.

Liszt was notorious for his affairs with women, and women just threw themselves at him. We were all into saying things ridiculously, so “Liszt luffes teh Womens” became a mantra of sorts. It’s most of why he’s one of my favorite composers- that and the fact his pieces are awesome.

Do you have a favorite classical composer? What are some fun facts you know about them?